Helmets and bicycle safety by Nemorino
Hardly anyone in Paris wears a bicycle helmet, except me and this lady in the photo.As I have mentioned on some of my other pages, I consider bicycle helmets to be a sensible precaution especially for children and for us elderly folks, but I am not in favor of compulsory helmet laws because they dissuade people from cycling, and the damage caused by not cycling far outweighs any slight increase in safety that a helmet might provide.
I have discussed this in more detail in a tip on my Amsterdam page called Why the Dutch don't wear bicycle helmets.
Also I have written a tip called Why I still wear a bicycle helmet even though the Dutch don't.
In any case, there are other precautions that are MUCH more important than wearing a helmet, and the main one is:
Don't try to pass motor vehicles on the inside!
Five Velib' riders have been killed in Paris since the system went into operation in July 2007, and in all five cases the situation was the same. The cyclist tried to pass a truck or bus on the right, got into that vehicle's blind spot and was crushed to death when the truck or bus made a right turn.
Wearing a helmet would not have prevented any of these deaths.
For more on how to prevent this kind of accident, see "Collision Type #3" on the website bicyclesafe.com, which is all about "How to Not Get Hit by Cars".
These five Velib' deaths were front-page news in the Paris papers, unlike the traffic deaths of pedestrians, motorists, motorcyclists or non-Velib' cyclists, which are barely mentioned.
In fact, bicycle safety has improved considerably since the beginning of Velib', simply because there is safety in numbers. The more cyclists there are on the streets, the safer we are.
I noticed this particularly the other day at the tricky intersection by the Hotel de Ville where Rue de Rivoli, Rue du Renard and Rue de la Coutellerie all come together. I used to get off and walk this one, but now I was in a group of about a dozen cyclists all going the same direction, so it was no problem to ride through the intersection together.
Statistically, bicycle use has gone up by 24%, but injuries only by 7%.
http://bicyclesafe.com/